…and so a new chapter begins!

Marketing…who really needs another blog post on that…ugh! Don’t we clutter the web enough with regurgitated content? Well…I’ve got one more post to add to the mix and this one holds about as much weight as the clutter because it talks about nothing but AIR. Air is a powerful force in marketing, and after buying a bag of Lays with 5 or 6 chips in it, I decided to figure out just how powerful a tool air is. With a tape measure, the calculator on my phone, some funny looks in the grocery store and an air extraction technique perfected by Vu Dang, I set out to establish an Air Inflation Rating (A.I.R.) and gather other data that explains the power of air.

My first product – the classic Wonder Bread. All 20 slices of bread stuffed into one 8oz measuring cup and the data that came of it:

Leaving the store with my loaf of bread, I was carrying 92% air!  It get’s better though…take a look at the all natural PopChips. With so much air in these, the ‘all natural’ statement definitely lives up to its claim…I mean, how do you get more natural than air anyway?

PopChips came away with the highest A.I.R. number. That means PopChips contain more air than all the other products, relative to its original size (equaling 94% air!) . I thought Keebler’s ice cream cones/cups would give the chips a run for their money, but it wasn’t even close.

The final product I looked at – Kellogg’s Corn Pops dropped the ball when it came to air power, but I suppose that’s a good thing for consumers as they are not paying as much for air in this case. Still, over two-thirds of your money evaporates into good old oxygen when you buy a box of these.

In conclusion, I paid $14.89 for the 4 products, and a staggering 86% of my spend went to air! Another interesting observation…if I replaced all the air used to shelve a bag of PopChips with solid chip matter, that bag of chips would cost 35 times that of crude oil at the same volume (oil calculated at $100 a barrel), so you might want to think about buying something a little more ‘solid’ if you’re looking to make your money go further…especially in this economy.

With weightless numbers like these, air should be an active ingredient on food labels. Will it happen…most likely not, but if it does I can already see the marketing spin machine putting ‘high heels on a goldfish’ and offering organic air as the next ‘need to have’. It might seem a little far fetched, but given the above data I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the next step in air’s storied evolution.

Lāt-air,
eric

Here is an example of how we took the tons of data generated around the largest sporting event in the world, and turned it into a set of clear graphical findings we call the Social Bowl:

For some more information on the infographic, here is a blog post I wrote for DP.

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Here are a few explorations into the branding that tells a bit of that story:

I mean MC Hammer and Mr. T…what is there not to love!!

1 idea. 1 rented bike. 1 camera phone. 1 map of Berlin. 9 hours of peddling.

I arrived in Berlin this summer and had an idea…I would grab a map and draw a ‘B’ (for Berlin) over the heart of downtown. I made sure the ‘B’ went through areas of the city that I was interested in seeing. I then rented a bike and started following the ‘B’ path with the idea of photographing ‘Berlin’s Alphabet’ as I explored. I started with ‘A’, moved to ‘B’ and so on. In reality, I could have photographed ‘A’ through ‘Z’ much faster, but I was looking for the character of Berlin, not a bunch of license plate and advertisement photographs. Halfway through, I thought that my kids might want to make the same ride and trace the alphabet through Berlin years later, so I started photographing more permanent letters, hoping that some would still be there the second time around. Below is a map that shows where I photographed each of the letters in Berlin, and then the actual letters themselves follow:

The map might look a little confusing at first, and that is because when I finished the ride, I had photographed up to the letter ‘X’. I still needed ‘Y’ and ‘Z’, so I started on the path again until I found those final two letters. Looking at the map, you’ll also see that I sometimes wandered off the path. I actually did that quite a bit, but when it came to photographing the letters, I tried to stay close.

A few other notes of interest – It rained lightly on and off that day, but between the letters ‘N’ and ‘M’, it was raining a litter harder, so I was looking for cover and not letters at that moment. All day I had seen the big P’s for parking, and after I photographed the ‘O’, I was determined to find a parking ‘P’…suddenly they were harder to find. I ate lunch right around ‘J’ and ‘K’…a bratwurst with sauerkraut and potatoes…soooo good! As mapped above, here is Berlin’s own alphabet as seen through my eyes:

And finally (if you are still with me), here are a few of the other photographs I took while on my journey through the city…a little sliver of Berlin’s urban DNA:

…if you are really, really still with me, I will close with saying that my legs felt like jello after the nine hours, the original map I had was wet and in pieces, I had a store owner yell at me in very loud German for taking a picture of his facade (letter ‘O’) and finding a restroom at one point was so difficult I rushed down a scary alley to save my bladder. BUT…I would not have traded this experience for anything. Seeing the city this way was raw, point-blank, and earned. It was a path no one else could have ever shown me, and that made it all mine. Though I’ve been to Berlin many times before, this time I was in a new city and it was fantastic!!

I’m a father…I will be a grandfather one day, and so this picture sent an army of messages within moments of seeing it. The shirt says I’m an honorable member of society.  The face says I’m a fun clown…or maybe I’m a ragging disgruntled murdering train wreck.  The glasses simply say old, smart and hiding something.  Holding the baby is all about love and caring, but the baby itself is saying, ‘caring my ass…get me back to that eTrade commercial set and as far away from this guy as possible’.  The boxing shorts – that ‘s just mystery turned to 11, and an added layer to the already rich story palette.  The couch…well, that’s pharmaceutically induced bad taste, but the pattern gets props for keeping people awake. The picture has a lot to say, and I bet it’s talking to you in its own language.

A good visual that’s on brand will stick with/to you. It will grow and mature, and could even compel you to share.  I saw this image flash by me two days ago, and though I saw it for just a few seconds, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had seen.  Today I found the image again and thought it needed sharing…hence the post.

Branded marketing that has the Boom Boom Pow of this image will give birth over and over again all throughout our content driven lives.  It’s not that we are all making babies, but we are all our own channel, and if branded content is good enough, we will be more than happy to air it!

One interesting? disturbing? sad? image served up via the ME network…enjoy!

Let’s face it…we all have the ability to act as our own public relations agent online, and because of that, there is a lot of time spent crafting our digital selves. Even those of us that are young and naive are starting to understand that youthful public bliss could leave deep scars down the road. As digital communications advance, the stakes are now much higher…and by higher I mean digital Lipoplasty or Abdominoplasty…not just a shot of Botox or a little nip off the ankles.

Everything we say out in the strata of zeros and ones can be searched, indexed and analyzed by everyone. Take the insurance industry…they are starting to look at ranking their customers based on ‘social’ conversations. If someone is the Mayor of McDonalds on FourSquare and talking about their favorite cigarettes via Facebook, that is a blow to their health index and their pocketbook. You let someone know you drive fast or don’t wear a seatbelt – another cash hit and blow to an index. You can see the dilemma we are all slowly starting to face…be yourself or be what everybody looking in wants you to be…it’s similar to famous personalities that live a lot of their lives in the spotlight and are often forced into public personas the audience dictates.

If the Mayor of McDonalds hears that insurance companies are rewarding healthy social ‘chatter’, you can imagine the major plastic pixel surgery that Mayor will go through. And with that (this is the sad part) comes the death of social media as we know it. As we all become clones of what society is looking for, the chatter becomes calculated and boring…no longer real and spontaneous.

The allure of the big stage and bright lights we all have had access to…that taste of experiencing 140 characters of fame…it’s all fading quickly as we learn how exposed we all are. Our digital socializing is going to move behind ‘invite only’ doors and become blind to the world that searches for our every word…stay tuned.

Answer: Pin the sperm on the egg!!

It was quick, easy and a lot of fun!  And you have to wonder why all of us have been so creatively stunted with tails and donkeys our whole lives.

I just got done speaking at the OMMA Conference in Los Angeles.  I sat on a panel of 5, and we had 45 minutes to discuss ‘Can Creative Save Display?’  The simple answer is NO…at least not by itself.

It’s a big topic and a lot went unsaid in the short 45 minutes, so here is a quick breakdown of what I would do to save banner ads:

Targeting. Let’s start with what everyone is saying – better targeting!  How?  Well that’s 2 or 3 blog posts in itself…let’s just say it can get a lot better.  There are some powerful tools for targeting out there, but privacy issues will be that other arm wrestling against them.

Bigger is not better. Both the IAB and OPA are preaching bigger banner ads.  That’s a mistake and is really just adding more lipstick to the pig.  As our screens get smaller, taking away content space and providing more real estate to something already not working will hurt the user’s experience and only frustrate views down the (very short) road.

Banner-DUE. Instead of banners getting bigger, why not go in the other direction and broom them off the page – only leaving the resiDUE of the banners behind.  What is this Banner-DUE I speak of…imagine a very clean site with only content as the hero.  As you read, you come across a small/simple icon that lives in the content…a very discreet piece of marketing (resiDUE) that is specific to the content being read.  When you get to the icon you can ignore it and continue reading or choose to rollover it and either goto that link, save it for later consumption, send to others, post to your socialNets, etc.  For better transparency, using a simple set of  banner-DUE icons will tell the users right away what type of content is awaiting them, allowing for better decisions around what marketing messages hold value in their eyes.

Mass-Customization. Banners are not going away tomorrow, and for the near future we will see growth in the number of banner sizes offered.  We consume our content with screens of all sizes (phones to giant plasmas).  A banner campaign needs to be created as a ‘kit of parts’ that dovetails nicely to each user’s needs and their current screen.  As creatives, our challenge is to build those targeted components that speak in many unique ways, but are still conceptually strong, esthetically appealing and easily mass produced.

Let People opt in! I know…most people think this is bullshit, but hear me out.  If you give users a choice of – (A) continue getting the random crap ads as usual, or (B) tell us how you want to be marketed to.  Users would jump at the opportunity to tell marketers that they would prefer in-text ads over eye-blasters, or the fact they prefer basketball over golf and action films over documentaries.  If all of the talk around targeted advertising is really about giving the users what they want, why not simply ask them?  To further incentivize user opt in, imagine banners that give away $$$ instantly and only those that have opted in have access to those special (golden ticket) banners.

Facebook Connect. Ad networks should be ALL OVER THIS!  Again, users would need to opt into opening up their Facebook content to the ad networks.  If users do so, they would receive marketing materials based on their latest Facebook status update, or see banners that are personalized with their own images.  Again, opting in with levels of exposure to their personal data is key.  Phones already allow people to opt into receiving geo-targeted local area coupons as they get close to participating retailers…banner should be keeping pace.

Banner as tool. If you can serve up a valuable tool that will save time, people will engage with that banner.  For example, someone is reading an article about shoes, and the banner is for Zappos.  The banner has a live feed of someone waiting to help you right there through the banner.  ‘I can order your shoes right now!’  If needed, the banner can be expanded and the live helper on the other end will show you different shoes and talk you through any questions you may have.  For companies that are already engaged in client conversations through social media, the person live on the other end of that banner can very well be the same person doing your Twitter/Facebook/etc. correspondence.  Call center reps. that have taken on digital channels are also ripe for staring in these banners.

Ad networks, publishers, advertisers and agencies all need to start thinking about larger shifts in how banners get used.  If not, it won’t be a pretty site when that caked on lipstick quickly starts running down the chin of our pig.